Passing Each Other in Halls

"The story follows the course of one loopy night in Los Angeles, as the narrator and his friend P.J. prowl the streets and the clubs, talking tough but feeling vulnerable," writes Patrick Ryan, editor of One Teen Story, in his introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "[Matt de la Peña]'s narrator is—perhaps secretly—into vulnerability. He’s an aspiring poet; a keenly observant, wanna-be tough guy; a romantic who still isn’t confident in his kissing abilities. "When he and P.J. stumble upon a group of girls and 'join forces' for the evening—palling around, flirting with one another—it’s because that’s what young people are supposed to do. When the group falls into the tracking beam of a spoiled, semi-rich kid named Lawrence, and ends up at the house of his dying great-aunt, and commences partying only to discover that Lawrence is a Class-A jerk and his great-aunt wants to have the lot of them arrested for trespassing, it’s because that’s the kind of muck young people barreling toward adulthood can expect to find on a rambling, adventurous, and possibly ill-conceived night on the town. "Matt de la Peña writes with a forward lean that sends us, as readers, right from the beginning to the end—but with the crazy, zigzag path of a Magic Bullet. His dialogue is pitch-perfect...The result is that, upon finishing this story, you’ll want to go back and read it again just to see how he does it."